Rudy: Being our friend
By GENE PALSGROVE

Our friend, my friend, Rudy Potochnik, endured a long bout with Parkinson’s disease and complications which led to his death on January 18, 2003. As I watched him struggle to find and share his thoughts and express them, I found myself flooded with the many ways our lives touched. How my life has been enriched by our friendship.

Our paths converged in October, 1944, at CPS Camp Wellston, Michigan. There, I entered upon an informal university education among the most diverse group of men imaginable - politically, religious orientation, reasons for opposing the war, social values, education - you name it. Rudy was a stimulating part of this mix.

From the time of our introduction, I knew this free-thinker was a carbon copy of no one. His socialist family background exposed me to ideas from which I had been sheltered. He forcefully articulated his position in endless camper discussions on every topic under the sun and into the cosmos. He was one of several intellectuals from the University of Michigan and, yes, at first, I felt a bit intimidated!

Rudy and I cut firewood on opposite ends of a cross-cut saw in sub-zero weather, knee deep snow. I see him on snow shoes racing across frozen Lake Chittendon on a camp activity day. Another time, he won a telephone pole climbing contest - the old fashioned way, with spurs.

We would meet again in Modesto in l948. Rudy here in l947 to join Gordon and Gale Nutson and Howard Ten Brink to establish the Wolverine Real Estate and Building Service; Lenore, my wife, and I here from the Mid-west as directors of a community rehabilitation project in South Modesto.

In l954, Lenore and I built our first home, a Rudy design. In l959, Rudy worked with us to design our present home. There are hundreds of homes in the Modesto area and several sub-divisions which have Rudy’ signature on them.

Years ago, Rudy, wife June, some fifteen others and I were on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. One event stands out as the most wonderful and unique musical experiences of my life. Our raft beached at Red Rock Cavern, a natural amphitheater, hollowed out at a bend in the river over eons of time. In a moment of inspiration, Jim Worthington, Gale Nutson, Rudy singing lead, and I broke into barbershop melody. The acoustics were like beautiful sparkling crystals as our companions became reverently quiet. When we finished the piece, the stillness held for a moment as all realized that we had experienced one of life’s special moments. I shared this memory with Rudy the day before he died. I thought I saw a smile of remembrance.

In l985, at the height of tension between the Soviet Union and the U.S., Rudy and June were in a group of twenty-five of us who, uninvited, made a peace and friendship visit behind “enemy” lines (Russia and Ukraine). Rudy’s open, friendly and knowledgeable manner were a part of the process that eventuated in the establishment of the Modesto/Khmelnitskiy Sister City relationship.

As I reminisce, I picture Rudy racing down ski slopes in the Sierra and hiking on High Sierra trails. I picture him on the tennis courts, a tough competitor with a sizzling cross-court back-hand and a net defense to avoid, and I realize what a full and diversified life this friend has lived.

Friendship deepens as it is nurtured. I am grateful that several years ago I shared with Rudy how much I valued his friendship. I am grateful I did so at a time when he understood and reciprocated.

Thanks, friend.

Refraction of Willie's life

 I didn't know Willie Weaver well, but I think of him fondly almost every time the wind blows or a bird flutters by. You see, hanging on my patio is a pipe windchime Willie made about six years ago for the auction at the annual Fourth of July Connections fundraiser.

Myrtle Osner and I each bid furiously for the thing. Myrtle ultimately prevailed and then promptly presented me with the chimes. I packed them carefully when I moved to Santa Rosa and they've been hanging outside my bedroom window ever since.

There are many wonderful things about them. First, (and Willie told me this would be) the copper pipes' color has aged and deepened with the weather and the years, a lovely metaphor for our lives, I think. Second, they produce a rich song every time the wind blows or a bird gets too close or my children swing from the cross-beam that holds them. Perhaps most serendipitous is the rainbow the sun creates each time it catches the plexiglass top piece that holds the chimes together. Every so often a beam of rainbowed light reflects and moves around my living room. My children used to call it Tinkerbell come to visit. From now on, though, I will prefer to think of that light-filled beam as Willie's spirit come to visit.

Nancy Veiga 
Santa Rosa

Remembering Hardy Miller 
By DON MCMILLAN

I met Hardy through local Green Party meetings. At first I grated at his dedication to populist economic issues such as local currencies. He seemed closed to a broader agenda. Once he shared a set of taped lectures on intimacy with our group of Greens, and I loathed it but true to form did not question it. At that time few things repelled me more than intimacy.

My regard for Hardy grew some five years later when we volunteered at and ate from the Modesto Garden Project. With him around, I was not the only customer who took his veggies home by bicycle. His arrangement for carrying things on his bicycle gave ideas for the evolution of my own system. As we shared, I gained greater appreciation for his passion for local currencies, though to my knowledge it remains an unfulfilled dream in our area.

Hardy helped me out with one memorable barter. Not happy with the token post-consumer content of toilet paper from recycled sources available at local retailers, I arranged to buy a case of 96 rolls with higher post consumer content. In exchange for a few rolls, Hardy drove to the warehouse to pick it up for me. Once I had the case, I made deliveries by bicycle to a few partners in this purchase.

But where I really miss Hardy is his willingness to listen without judging. I last spoke with him by phone in the summer of 2001. It was that summer Congressman Condit didn't make his usual showing at the fourth of July parade, that summer when there was still hope Chandra Levy would be seen alive again, that summer when most took for granted the World Trade Center would be there through the coming winter. I was disturbed by the sickness in our community and nation demonstrated by the presence of network scandal wagons camped out behind Condit's office. I shared my concern with Hardy and wondered what it would take to temper the media's interest in our congressman.

I regret that I did not phone him since and share with him the changes in thinking and attitude I've been undergoing since then, my growing awareness that I'm powerless over what makes a news story capture profitable ratings for the networks. I can choose to unplug or tune out myself. I've come to believe that I'm powerless over so much of what looked sick to me before those scandal wagons, dislodged by New York's inferno, tucked their satellite dishes. But I've also become much more willing to seek my own wholeness. That may after all be the best possible contribution I can make towards my community's health. I can't measure how much Hardy's listening to me that day two summers back bolstered my willingness to keep walking (and pedaling) towards some of my worst fears. I am grateful that he had been doing enough work on himself so that he could offer me that intimate support at one crucial moment in my own journey.

Thank you, Hardy!